Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act

I just downloaded Zoom for Mac, saw that it was a .pkg file. Great, I can see what files it installs before I install it.

I open the .pkg, click Continue so it can run its script, then a second later Installer quits and the app launches. What?!

Turns out, Zoom installs the entire app in the 'preinstall' script of the installer package! Inside there's a copy of '7z', and the app is extracted with that. The preinstall script is littered with typos and poor grammar.

I'm not one of those people who thinks that Apple is going to force all Mac software to come through the App Store, but when I see stuff this stupid...I start to wonder.

I feel like Zoom has a history of doing shady things under the vail of "ease of use" (referring to the uninstall complaints a few months ago).

I do think on macOS the average user doesn't understand DMG files, run apps from inside the DMG instead of copying them to /Applications and deleting the disk image. My guess is that most people install Zoom after a meeting has started and this was the quickest, fewest dialog method of getting it up and running.

> run apps from inside the DMG instead of copying them to /Applications and deleting the disk image

First, there's nothing wrong with that.

Also, some apps display a message asking to be moved to /Applications when launched from a DMG.

> First, there's nothing wrong with that.

Sure, you can technically run .app from most places. It becomes problematic in that you can't write to that directory or self update the app if it's still in the DMG. If you reboot you have to know to remount before launching. Not having it in /Applications also becomes a mess if you're in a multi-user environment.

> Also, some apps display a message asking to be moved to /Applications when launched from a DMG.

This is the kind of friction and extra dialog boxes I'm sure they were avoiding.

Personally, I hate pkg files. I wish macOS had a better flow for unsavvy users to deal with DMG and app files.